Leta’s favorite bedtime books are not the ones that tell stories, but rather ones that allow her to show off her amazing sense of recall. She loves alphabet books where she has to identify every object on the page — there’s the apple and the airplane and the avocado, except she says the apple, the hairplane, and the cahnnocado. She enjoys pointing to all the animals on their respective pages, tiger on the T page, lion on the L page, mangaroo on page K. Our neighbor was clearing out her children’s toys a few weeks ago and gave Leta a small, plastic Noah’s Ark with a slew of animals. Leta went through and named off every animal, and when she got to the miniature Noah she stopped short and looked at me to give her a clue. Before I could explain who he was she held him up and said, “Monkey!” Ah-Ha! A toy based on the Bible is teaching my daughter about evolution. That, Alanis Morissette, is sweet, sweet irony.

She’s also a huge fan of number books, particularly ones that ask, “How many [object X] do you see?” Last night we were reading one of these books, and she pointed out that there was one bunny, two ducks, and three bears. I told her those were not bears, they were mice made to look much larger than they are in reality. She said blankly, “Bears.” I corrected her again and told her no, those were definitely mice, although I could see how she could think otherwise. She said, “Okay. Bears and mice.” Thank you, international diplomat.

Numbers are now her passion, and she spends most of her day counting everything — the number of shoes in the room, the toes on her feet, the steps leading up to the house. During mealtime she will count the number of items on her plate — four pieces of chicken that she won’t eat, five peanut butter crackers that she will not touch. On the rare occasion that she does complete a meal, we will sprinkle a few M&M’s on her tray, usually four, and ask her to count them. Last night she pointed to each one and counted slowly, “One! … Two! … Three! … Four!” And then she moved her finger back to the first one, closed her eyes and kept going, “Five! … Six! … Seven! … Eight!” She was willing them with the power of her brain to multiply.

One of her favorite games to play now involves counting, and out of nowhere she’ll yell out a number and wait for one of us to yell out the next number in sequence. She would continue doing this for eternity if she could count that high, and also if she didn’t take the numbers so personally. Numbers 1 through 10 are all her own, her good friends, solid numbers she can trust. 11 through 20 make her absolutely giddy and breathless as if they are sharing their Twizzlers with her. But something happened between her and the numbers 21 through 30, something devastating and unforgivable, she doesn’t like to talk about it. 30 through 40 are dead to her, don’t even bring those up. And 40 through 50 are in grave danger, and it is her duty to warn them. The kid won’t ever make it to 100 because the emotional exhaustion will kill her first.

Related:

Don’t you just love it. My grandson has this enormous alphabet book of foods which he lovingly reads over and over. His pronunciation is strange as well. But my favorite thing right now is part of his singing repertoire. His folks call it his I’ve Been Working on the Railroad /Old McDonald Medley… the important section is Fee, fie, fiddly IEIEIO.

wrensuicide

I am also curious about what Leta is holding. But it looks like a dog collar or a belt to me, not a thong.

http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily/06_30_2006.html Machine ‘O’ Doom

Nice job giving your child an interest in learning stuff.
Now no one can question you as parents. The cookies at breakfast HELP HER LEARN. Hehe…

ColleenS

Cute! And smart too!

Has Leta gotten her hair cut?

As for what she’s holding, I say maybe some kind of exercise heart rate monitor?

Pascha

How in the hell doy you resist the urge to slather her in barbecue sauce and swallow her whole? My god…

…or is that just me? I admit, I want to eat your baby right up.

When my niece was that age, she could count to 100, but she hated doing it…so we started bribing her. We would give her one penny for every number she counted. The goal was to give her $1 for counting to 100. Whenever she did it, she was so excited that we HAD to go to the store right then. She would proudly announce to the cashier that she was buying candy because she counted to 100 and got $1 for it. She was so damn cute about it that they would almost always give her candy for free and tell her to save her $1 to buy toys.

and maybe you will have some m&ms…or feel the lash of this old belt I’m innocently twirling.

yeah, sorry…strange, i know

http://mdwestmom.blogspot.com Kelsey

The audio on that movie made my 19-month-old, who was screaming out the window to our dog in the yard, stop dead in her tracks. Then she laid down a little “sis, sesen, et!” She’s a got a long way to go to catch up with Leta. Brilliant!

http://www.xanga.com/gora_kagaz Gora_Kagaz

haha…too funny and too cute! i love how her tone changes with each set of numbers.

http://www.thebeatys.com becky

ho.ly.shit.
amazing on so many levels!!

Bird Lover

Nothing profound to add to the post. Just wanted to say “Oh, my godness.” The cuteness makes me smile.

http://chatty71180.typepad.com Carole Karnofski

I have been trying to use telekinesis to make M&M’s multiply for years now without success. Have Leta get back to me when she unlocks the secret.

Fog Spinner

My son had no 17-19 until half way through kindergarden. It was like they didn’t exsist. You could point them out to him and he would flat deny their exsistance. I told him once…. yeah you think this now.. wait till your 16.

http://cowjumpmoon.blogspot.com Shalini

I love the way she says ELEVEN!!!! way too cute!

She looks really upset when she was in the late 20s… but still so genuis-like!

OneBabyMama

I finally registered with typekey. I can’t NOT comment anymore!
She is such a treasure, Heather. And damn dude, she blows my little one away with the numbers! He counts to ten…if we’re lucky. Haha.
But he can sing pretty much every song we play for him…ON KEY. I’ll take what I can get!
Anyway, yeah. I’ve been reading for a while now. You freakin’ RULE.

http://www.wouldbewritersguild.com TiffyWiffyPooPooWanna

What do mangaroos taste like? I really, really want one.

http://www.migraine-eyes.typepad.com Erin Fritz

My first thought was “is that a THONG she’s holding”. But upon further examination, I’ve decided that, yes. It is a battery-packed thong.

Playing with a battery-packed thong AND counting. Way to go, Leta! You’re WAY more mature than you should be!

lizzybored’n

Oh so cute! My 2 year old daughter saw me watching it, and burst out laughing. Then she kept repeating (like a savant) BABY MORE! BABY MORE! I must have played that video clip 25 times just to keep her entertained. Later, during a tantrum melt down getting her out of the carseat, I said “wanna see baby more?” And she declared “Yaaaaaahh!” Thanks Dooce for making my day just a teeny bit easier! PS. I’m the gal you met in Liberty Park at the fountains the other day.

Heidi Nelle

Ooh, she’s adorable! And that’s saying something, cause I usually don’t like children

http://www.onethingdesigns.com vicki

oh why did you do that? All of my childrens toddler years came rushing back at me like a nightmare that I can not get rid of…Groundhogs day revisited.

ABCD,JK,NM,VP,LKJM,1234,9786, and so on it went on for days, weeks, months and now one is in the gifted program and the other still won’t shut up.

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